Yet in other respects Instagram is remarkably resistant to modernism. It is not particularly reflexive or engaged. Its image-world hews closer to that of the Dutch seventeenth century than anything that came after. A world of self-confident burghers, surrounded by the products of their industry and the vehicles for its enjoyment—it’s strange that we’ve returned to it now. The great difference though is that those burghers didn’t have to worry about curating their own lives. Artists did that for them, selecting objects and scenes and imbuing them with meaning. Now the onus is on each of us.

Life in the Instagram bubble requires a constant calibration of how it will be viewed from outside. That need to make life itself aesthetic, to ask, over and over “What will this look like in a square?” exerts a slow, constant pressure of its own. It can be pleasant, and it can also squeeze like a vice. At Stanford, where Instagram was born (or at least grandfathered), they have a name for it: Duck Syndrome, since, in the words of one student, “It’s where everyone on campus appears to be gliding effortlessly … but below the surface, our little duck feet are paddling furiously, working our feathered little tails off.”